


You never were any good at chess..

by palegingerade



Category: Bottom (UK)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, Friendship, Gen, Hallucinations, Minor Canonical Character(s), No Slash, Other, Sad Eddie, canon typical behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 13:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3531224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palegingerade/pseuds/palegingerade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He would never say it out loud but Eddie misses his foul depraved best friend, but he always shows up when he least expects just to spoil all his fun, the bastard!</p>
            </blockquote>





	You never were any good at chess..

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little idea that wouldn't leave me alone. Apologies for angst coz it's not really my thing but it's kind of okay in the end :)

The stains on the floorboards were starting to become blurred as Eddie closed his watering eyes and his head began to feel heavy. Maybe drinking that last bottle of floor cleaner was a bad idea after all and he should probably get up off the kitchen floor soon before Ethel came downstairs and literally dragged him up to bed? She wasn't as good at it as Richie was and by the time he was sober enough to know where he was he often had carpet burns on the back of his head and splinters where there really shouldn't be splinters. She wasn't as good as Richie at lots of other things either; she was often too drunk to cook and the cups of tea she made didn't have bits of floating bark in them like the ones he lovingly prepared, but she wasn't all that bad really, it was better than having no one now that Richie wasn't here anymore. 

His head was suddenly pounding violently and he squeezed his eyes up tight so they hurt for a second as a harsh reminder to stop those thoughts right there. It was only after a drink that he felt this bad, trouble was it had been a nine months constant binge drinking cycle that he was stuck with now and he couldn't get off. The sheer amount of alcohol he'd consumed before all the......unpleasantness.. never make him feel this way, but he'd never imagined having to face this sad, lonely and depressing world all alone without his equally sad and depressing counterpart. Even if Richie was a complete bastard he was always there, annoying him to the point where he often beat him to a bloody pulp, but always there none the less. Poor blighter. He continued to reminisce until the room came back around again and he'd forgotten how he'd ended up being this pissed on the kitchen floor in the first place.

Attempting to stand up and stop being such a bloody big girls blouse, he tripped over the tails of his coat, colliding into the sink and ripping both the cupboard doors off the hinges. 

_Welcome to Eddies bra?_

It wasn't the same at all of course, and for a start it was almost empty. There had been no one here to do all the shopping for a while now and no one to tell him off for drinking the household cleaning products, not that it was stopping him one little bit. He reached deep into the dark recesses, behind the freezing cold pipes, and pulled out an orange bottle of what suspiciously looked like bleach. In his drunken stupor he struggled with the lid for a good five minutes before snapping it clean off in his hand. The bright yellow foam emitting from the rim steamed up his glasses and brought tears to his eyes but he held it up to his lips anyway and prepared to take a long deep swig.

''Trying to hide from your uncle Eddie eh? Cheeky little bastard! Banzai baby, bottoms up...''

"Uhh, that's disss-gusting! Are you really gonna drink that?"

He tutted and rolled his eyes impatiently, still poised with the bottle and ready to be even more intoxicated. "Ugh, not now Rich, buggar off. I'm trying to have a bloody drink!"

"Oh well that's just charming isn't it?! You're trying to kill yourself you demented half brain, that's Chinobyl -o-foam! Don't you remember what happened before?" Before he could swallow it down Richie snatched the bottle from his hand, tipping the fizzing contents on the kitchen floor where it instantly burned a huge hole through the bare wooden slats. "Honestly, must I always do everything for you, this isn't some sort of hobby of mine y'know! Look at you, you look even more disgusting than ever. Go into the drawing room and I'll fix you up one of me specials."

"I'm fine." Eddie snapped back but allowed himself to be ushered into the living room anyway and shoved down onto the sofa. Richie still knew how to spoil his fun even after all this time but as he watched him tie his apron strings around his waist and roll his shirt sleeves up to cook he decided he didn't quite mind it now.

He gladly ate everything Richie made for him, right down to the mysterious black charred lumps and suspicious looking 'toast.' He was actually grateful for the questionable 'fry-up' this time coz he was absolutely starving. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten a full meal and was usually too drunk to feel any hunger lately. He smiled as he remembered often polishing off entire fridge-fuls of food, even Mr. Rottweiler next door had been a victim of their hairbrained schemes but he couldn't do all that now. It felt like another world, another lifetime ago. Too much had changed and it would never be the same again.

"So how've you been Edward? Still living with Ethel Cardew? I noticed she was back on the scene pretty bloody quickly- the bitch! How dare she make you feel better, you're supposed to be depressed coz of me."

Richies purposly teasing smile was some what of a comfort and he suddenly felt the empty spinning and scary spacey feeling in his head get a lot easier to stomach. "Oh I'm just dandy matey, and...you?" 

"Grate! I'm grrrate me old mate, a bit knackered from dashing back and forth from all the saucy nymphs up there to visit you but you won't stop being so bloody unhappy and wallowing around the flat like some vast slug will you?"

"I'm norr unnappy!" He protested a little too strongly, slurring every word to cover his blatant embarrassment, "I'm jusss drunk, you bastard!" He yelled, swaying in his seat and extremely tempted just to fall forwards and collapse on the coffee table and onto his empty plate. All of a sudden he felt a hard nudge of an elbow in his back and a unexpected left hook catch him right in the face and knock him off the sofa to the floor. "Ow, Bloody hell, what was that for?"

"Sorry, you looked like you were about to slip into a coma so I thought I'd better wake you up, can't be too careful Eddie." With that there was another ferocious punch in the back of his head and as soon as he turned around and glared at Richie, a sharp stinging slap in the face.

"What are you doing now?!"

"Thought I'd better check to make sure."

"Right, that's it.." He stood up and shook himself off, jumping up and down on the spot, shaking his arms and legs and making a sort of purring "brrrrr,' noise to snap himself out of it. Richie was standing there with a look of defiant smugness that was so ridiculously irritating he was soon launching himself at him with both balled up fists. "So, it's a fight you want then is it?"

"Yes, it bloody well is buster!"

"Well stick em up then!"

"Uhh Eddie, don't be so foul!"

After landing a few right hooks of his own and smashing the dinner plate over his head, Richie was chasing him around the flat with the bottle of Chinobyl-o-foam, purposly wafting the hissing yellow gas at him as he taunted him with it. "Drink it then, go on, I don't care. You never listen to a word I say anyway. I don't know WHYYY I bother with you sometimes!"

"I don't know why you bother ever!" As soon as he said it he was tripped with a sweeping bright blue denim-clad leg and fell in a massive crumpled mass of broken crockery and blood on the floor again. It hurt but he was alright, just about, well......until the other plates were hurled violently at him. Each volleying launch of a dinner plate found its mark remarkably accurately and each word Richie yelled was punctuated with a loud crash and pained yelp.

"Because," smash! "I," smash! "just," smash! "want you to.." smash, smash, "GET HAPPY!"

"Alright stop. Blimeyyy Rich, I don't remember you being this violent before."

"Mystical forces Eddie, mystical forces!"

"Rubbish!" He sat up, dazed but strangely sober. His foul, depraved and supremely annoying best friend had well and truly proved his point with this one. He picked off shards of broken plate from his coat as he stood up and straightened his bent glasses. "Alright anyway point taken, no fighting and I'll cheer up okay, c'mon, how about a game of chess instead?"

"Bloody hell are you sure? We nearly ended up in the hospital last time remember?" 

He remembered only too well and giggled uncontrollably, feeling the strange twinge of unused facial muscles turn his frown into a wide grin. That hadn't happened for a very long time. "Yeah, it was a bit of a good night wasn't it? Right then, set em up me old mate and I'll get us some drinks."

"Alriggght! We really are the guys aren't we! Oh, and Eddie?"

"Yes Rich?"

"Nothing too poisonous right?"

"Oh, you know me!"

The game of chess started well, he only had to explain the rules to Richie another forty-seven times and it was like a single day hadn't passed. After various combinations of 'alcoholic' cocktails and a even stranger line up of chess pieces arranged in lines in front of them they both found themselves in hysterical fits of laughter staring at the demolished board. The defrosting vegetables, empty bottles of sauce, aftershave, pheromone spray, superglue and shot glasses had worked an absolute treat. It was daylight when they'd both cleaned up and Eddie was already severely hung over but finished the last of his drink just in time before his legs gave out and he collapsed again. 

"Right-o me old pal, I'd better be off. Plenty of birds will miss me if I stay here with you any longer. Same time next week?"

Eddie groaned and breathed into his jacket sleeve as his eyes got tired and began to water again. If Richie wanted to blame his tears on the Chinobyl-o-foam on the floor all around him then that was perfectly okay with him. He wouldn't normally be this much of a namby -pampy soppy git but he was drunk this time so he figured it was acceptable. "Right-o matey, oh and Rich?" He pulled himself up to look at him again before his vision compleatly clouded over and he passed out. "There's something I've been meaning to say to you for quite some time as it goes...."

"What?"

He grinned and led back down on the floor and into the puddle of yellow sludge Richie had stopped him from drinking.

"You never were any good at chess."

As he drifted off to sleep quite comfortable this time he couldn't help but smile. He knew Ethel would wake him up later and think he'd passed out unconcious from alcohol again. That bit was partly true, but he wouldn't tell her why. He would still carry on drinking regardless of her whining coz lately his hallucinations were bloody fantastic.


End file.
